Email Marketing Basics
All you need to begin email marketing is an opt-in email list and an email client like Microsoft Outlook that offers a BCC field. But most companies quickly outgrow that technique as their email list grows and their reporting requirements get more sophisticated. Email marketing services and software fill the breach, offering robust creation, sending and reporting capabilities to enable firms to optimize their results.

Email marketing available features
Whether offered as self-serve software or as a consulting service, email marketing services offer solutions that can be grouped into three primary buckets:

Email creation: Many solutions include templates for senders to use for newsletters and basic marketing campaigns. In addition, some providers have graphic designers on staff who can create custom designs for them. Once designed, these emails can be converted to different formats such as text and AOL. Some providers may make dynamic content available, where the subject line and/or other parts of the email itself can be adjusted to reflect specific information about the email recipient - name, interests, or previous purchases.

List management: Email marketing solutions should make it easy for you to add or delete names from the email list, select specific segments, and generally maintain your email list.

Sending: Email software sends each email individually, allowing you to easily track what's been sent. You have two options to choose from. One choice is to set up email blasts, which send a specific email to a set of email addresses at a given time. The other choice is to use an autoresponder, which consists of a specific email that gets sent to an email address at a certain designated timeframe once that address is added to the list.

The sending is actually the easiest part of the functionality. If you use an application service provider (ASP), the provider should constantly be monitoring the status of its mail servers. Mail servers that are deemed to be spammers will be blacklisted and emails from that server won't be delivered to their intended recipient.

It should also be noted that companies vary greatly in what they provide. Make sure to read the details of what they offer before signing up with any provider.

Sending options
Like other types of software, you can either purchase and download the software for use on your computer network or use a web-based service to manage your email sending efforts. You should opt for the Internet-based ASP unless you have a separate mail server to handle your outbound mail and IT employees who are well versed in how to avoid being blacklisted. Successful email marketing involves not only formatting and sending email but also ensuring that it gets through to the recipients.

Reporting
It is critical that any email marketing solution you use has robust reporting capabilities for you to track the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. You should be able to get basic mailing information like how many emails were delivered and bounced back, who requested to be unsubscribed, what percentage of people opened the email, and which links in the email were clicked on most often. You may also want to track this information at the email address level, and be able to identify exactly who did what upon receiving your email.

Emailing marketing services checklist

• What is the deliverability of emails that are sent?
• What steps does the firm take to ensure it is not blacklisted?
• What clients are accepted?
• Do I need to budget a certain amount to employ email marketing services?
• How long will it take to send my mailing?
• Does the service/software offer the level of reporting I need?
• How familiar is the service with the CAN-SPAM act? What do they do to adhere to it?

Email marketing services pricing
Email marketing services pricing varies greatly according to the services provided. Software to manage your email marketing efforts can range from less than $100 for a no-frills, "just send the email" software package to thousands of dollars for one that will manage your email marketing solution from list management to open rate tracking.

If you use a web-based service, just sending emails can cost $15 to $100 to set up a basic mailing and one to three cents to send each email. Additional fees at prevailing contractor rates can be charged for email creation and design, setup of more complex mailings, and email list management.